Biofuels: Food vs. Fuel?
The debates about food and agriculture have shifted substantially in the past year as the major economies of the world race to develop biofuels as a source of renewable energy. That shift in focus and the resulting demand for agricultural commodities has been one factor that has raised global grain prices to their highest levels in years. To some degree this takes the edge off the arguments about subsidies and the impacts of imports of cheap commodities on local economies. Instead, new debates have arisen about the potential for competition between agricultural production for food versus fuels and whether this demand will increase farmers’ incomes and generate local energy supplies or undermine food security.
ActionAid believes that this rush to embrace biofuels raises important questions for which adequate answers do not yet exist. These include the necessary public policies to ensure that increased production of biofuels feedstocks does not displace local food production, increase conflicts over access to land, water and other productive resources, and to ensure that the benefits of any such increase in production contribute to equitable and sustainable development. As ever, our analytical lens for evaluating the impact of the shift to biofuels is rooted in our partnerships with poor and excluded people in countries of the global south, particularly small-scale farmers and their families.
These debates are proceeding quickly in official and business circles. Increased renewable fuel standards targets in the United States and Europe have created new expectations about the international demand for biofuels exports to Northern markets. In March 2007 Presidents Bush and Lula signed a Memorandum of Understanding to exchange research on biofuels and to promote its development in third countries. Shortly after, the governments of China, India, South Africa and the European Union joined the U.S. and Brazil to form the International Biofuels Forum, which is currently working to establish technical standards to trade biofuels as commodities.
ActionAid is reaching out to partners in developing countries to find answers to these questions and to bring the perspectives of poor people into the debate. In Ghana, for example, much attention has focused on the production of jatropha, a non-food crop that can be grown on marginal lands as a feedstock for biodiesel. Local producers have expressed interest in jatropha production to diversify their production and create new opportunities for income generation, but there is a risk that extensive monocropping will have negative environmental consequences and undermine efforts to achieve food security. In similar situations in the past, women have been especially hurt by increases in the production of cash crops for export because of their less secure access to land and other productive resources.
ActionAid is working with our partners in Ghana, Senegal, Mozambique and Brazil to develop proposals to ensure that any biofuel production serves local communities’ needs for energy, food and incomes. In the meantime, ActionAid is pushing US and developing country officials to stop, look and listen before rushing headlong into new policies that could hurt farmers and consumers around the world.
